I refer to the dreaded Yu-Gi-Oh, of course, thus violating my own thread title. Way to go, me. I'm making this post for the purpose of linking to friends if necessary, though I wish for the community to see my reasoning and possibly critique it. This is intended as my complete argument for why I prefer the game Magic: the Gathering to Yu-Gi-Oh.

First, I will disclose my credibility or lack thereof, depending on your view:

I do not consider myself a Magic Pro at all. My history with the game started in Scourge, ended with Betrayers of Kamigawa, and then I got back into the game right about when Mirrodin Beseiged was released, and I continue playing to this day. My preferred formats are Commander and Modern.

Likewise, I am something of a novice to Yu-Gi-Oh, but I have played it over the past few months with the intent of being able to share hobbies with friends, and so I could make educated comparisons between the two games.

I will compare and contrast the following categories:

Deck ConstructionCompetitive PlayEase of Play/UnderstandingFlavorGame BalanceFun FactorArtManagement by Host Company

Deck Construction:

Comparing: The Deck-and-Sideboard format is the primary similarity. Each game also features a limit on the number of specific card copies, 4 for MTG and typically 3 for YGO.

Contrasting: The similarities end there. You all know how MTG deckbuilding works, so I will skip explaining that. YGO features an "Extra Deck" of up to 15 cards that can be tapped into by the effects of other cards. The Extra Deck is not drawn from at the start of turns, it can be thought of as a circumstantial "toolbox" pool of cards that can be accessed when appropriate. The deck size is minimum 40, maximum 60. No Battle of Wits for YGO. However, YGO also does not have to accomodate for lands or ever worry about mana restrictions.

My Analysis: MTG has a more rigid deck construction theme, barring 100-card formats like Commander. YGO has the advantage of only having a 40-card minimum, and I will concede that smaller decks are more reliable and theoretically cheaper. I will concede that advantage to YGO, though it is worth remembering that too much deck reliability can be a bad thing, contributing to repetitive gameplay. We'll return to this later when I address Game Balance.

Competitive Play:

Comparing: General consensus I've found between players of both games is that competitive players are a frequent source of unfun jerk behavior. Virtually everyone who has played in a tournament has encountered someone unpleasant. Competition can bring out the worst in people, so this is hardly surprising.

Contrasting: YGO has 2 formats: One where cards are restricted or banned completely, one where anything goes. MTG has Standard, Commander, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and various other less-popular formats like Extended, Pauper, Prismatic, etc. YGO is arguably easier to get into from a competitive aspect as one's cards will never "expire" from a format unless outright banned.

Aside: A typical YGO player only knows of MTG's Standard and sometimes Vintage formats, only having heard hearsay. Attempts to educate them of Modern, Commander, or the like typically results in "LA LA LA I AM NOT LISTENING I WILL ONLY HOLD ONTO MY FALSE PRECONCEPTIONS" in some form or another. My opinion of such people's intelligence is low. People are entitled to their opinions, but for goodness' sake why can't they be educated opinions?

Contrasting, resumed: YGO has deck archetypes much like how MTG does. However, the archetypes are spoon-fed to YGO players. Imagine deck archetypes being organized by creature type rather than deck function, except that the cards are all named in a unifying way that qualifies them as a tribe rather than their creature type (Elves vs. Goblins Duel Decks would literally all have the name Elf or Goblin in every card by YGO standards).

For example, take Mono-Black Control as an archetype. It will hold cards from a diversity of sets. Thoughtseize from Lorwyn, Abyssal Persecutor from Worldwake, Damnation from Planar Chaos, maybe a Core Set Smallpox instead of the original. This requires strategic thinking and card consideration from across Magic's history.

Now look at YGO. Decks are basically printed in one go. You get Hieratic Dragons all being printed at once. Earthbound Immortals (YGO's Eldrazi) all at once, Inzektors (more on these later!), Steelswarm, Gishki, Numbers, HERO (details later), Six Samurai, Wind-Up, Toon World, and the list goes on for literally pages and pages.

This is NOT universal, however, and there are a satisfying amount of decks (Such as decks centered around probably the only YGO cards every MTG player will know: Exodia, Dark Magician, Blue-Eyes) that violate this rule.

My Analysis: YGO's archetypes are more varied, but good lord are they spoonfed to the players. This becomes a recurring issue, "MTG for Dummies" being an insult of choice, though I feel the games are distinct from another enough that that's not true. However, it is hard to deny that YGO has a much easier entry barrier than MTG when it comes to competitive play due to the simplified formats.

Ease of Play/Understanding:

Comparing: Uh. Given this is a relative category to each game, there is no comparison.

Contrasting: YGO is simpler, hands down. There's no stack, there's no priority, there's no comprehensive rule PDF that dwarfs the US Tax Code. I'm sorry, fellow fans of MTG, but I'd be making a completely biased, untrue statement if I called MTG the simpler game. However, that simplicity is also a flaw in YGO. Let me explain the issues of not having lands and mana as a balancing system, for example.

In Magic, the mana system functions to restrict the options a deck has. A given Red deck isn't going to be tutoring cards or countering spells (barring wacky standouts like Gamble) due to mana balancing. Mana is the supreme checks-and-balances system in MTG. Blue is supposed to have trouble with aggressive creature strategies, for example. Delver and his ilk aside. When you try to have more effects and options from across the color pie, you sacrifice deck consistency for utility. This also helpfully keeps stupid things from happening unless a deck is custom-tailored to enable those stupid things, and most stupid things are engineered to have counters in other colors or even colorless cards (such as Relic of Progenitus).

In YGO, there is no "color checks and balances" system. So what can be used to create game balance? The Tribute Summon part of the game worked out at first, before mechanics like Synchro Summon and XYZ Overlay came about. Well, the answer is rarity. People who play MTG complain about the Mythic Rarity regularly.

My local card shop owner told me that you can easily tell the money value of a given YGO card by how shiny the card is, as each rarity level makes more and more of the card foil. (And yes, you can determine which booster packs have foils in them because of this, said owner even demonstrated this to me.)

This is a trainwreck. "Lotus Cobra is a terrible card because its a cheap Mythic Rare with incredible utility and fits into so many decks!" True, but count your blessings! At least it can't be played in literally every deck if someone wanted, unlike YGO, and at least it isn't Super Holofoil Tapdance Quasi-Interstellar Wallet Molestation Rare.

Analysis: I'm pretty sure even some YGO fans think the CHILDREN'S CARD GAMES thing is idiotic. The exception to this came up when I discussed this point with a Dungeon Master who ran a roleplay community, however. It is much easier and less intrusive to storytelling to design an ordinary person who plays a card game than it is to invent a Planeswalker. Additionally, Abridged Series parodies basically exist at all because of how stupid the premise to YGO is, and I'll call that an acceptable trade.

Game Balance:

Contrasting: I got ahead of myself earlier with YGO's rarity trainwreck situation. I'm going to tell you a pair of stories.

Story 1:

There once was a deck called Inzektors. It was an aggressive deck that led to incredible board swarm positions, and could pull out spot-removal effects by sacrificing Inzektor monsters to other Inzektor monsters, thus clearing the way for your Inzektor swarm to make alpha strikes every turn. The sheer speed of the deck hinged on the fact that each Inzektor typically benefitted from the amount of Inzektors in play. Due to the Synchro Summon mechanic, the more Inzektors you had out, the more Inzektors you could easily play. Inzektors dominated tournaments easily.

Story 2:

There once was a deck called Ravager Affinity. It was an aggressive deck that led to incredible board swarm positions, and could pull out spot-removal effects by sacrificing artifacts to Shrapnel Blast, thus clearing the way for your artifact swarm to make alpha strikes every turn. The sheer speed of the deck hinged on the fact that each artifact typically benefitted from the amount of artifacts in play. Due to the Affinity mechanic, the more artifacts you had out, the more artifacts you could easily play. Ravager Affinity dominated tournaments easily.

And now we reach the branching path. Wizards took one look at what Ravager Affinity did and banned half the cards in the deck. Konami looked at Inzektors and said "This is fun gameplay, let's make all our deck archetypes like this from now on!"

My friend who plays competitive YGO is basically disgusted by the game's current state. It's literally a race between the players to see who can swarm the board fastest and use monsters to cheat out more monsters while destroying enemy monsters, leading to incredibly samey gameplay.

This isn't like Caw-Blade being all over the place in competitive play at its peak. This would be like if Innistrad printed a "Rockforge Shaman" Goblin and a slew of amazing equipment along with Jace, Master of Card Advantage. And then Dark Ascension printed a "Treeforge Druid" Elf and some sort of gothic horror Living Weapon card set, along with Jace the Card Bouncer. And then Avacyn Restored saw "Waveforge Wizard" the Spirit, various equipment that tutored for other equipment ala Sunforger, and Jace, Jace of Jace. And so on.

Analysis: Advantage MtG. I see players complain about balance issues, or power creep, or whatever, but it is nowhere near as degenerate as YGO.

Fun Factor:

Comparison: Again, this is a contrast-only category.

Despite all the above, casual YGO is quite enjoyable, and very easy to just pick-up-and-play. YGO is a creature-centric game, creatures power out creatures which power out creatures. YGO has very meager Control cards outside of full-blown board lockdowns or sweepers. This means that it's aggro versus aggro, and that's an easy strategy to build around in YGO. Once you leave casual play, however, the concerns of acquiring a Stardust Transcendant XYZ Rainbow Dragon playset come into effect.

Analysis: Candle vs. Stick of Dynamite. MTG is a "slow burn" game that takes a while to learn the nuances of, and gameplay is less fast-paced and swingy compared to YGO. YGO is an "explosion" of fun, easy to get into at first, but once you get past the initial enthusiasm and start reaching for serious play, the fun is all gone. You can see why people who only play a little of each game will lean towards YGO more, as YGO structurally supports new players while MTG is relentlessly complex. Learning Curve variances lead to different amounts of payoff in the long term.

Art:

...Yeah. Anime artstyle is a simplistic thing. I appreciate visual simplicity, but it leads to monotony, as everything winds up looking the same.

Look at the guy's face on Molting Skin. You can tell that he's Japanese, he's from Kamigawa after all. Now look at basically any other set's humans, and you'll see Caucasians. You can clearly distinguish the western-influenced character designs from the eastern. Molting Skin in particular made me appreciate MTG art more than any other card. MTG's art is detailed, there's work put into it, and cards are only monotonous in appearance when that's the entire point (such as White Phyrexian cards from New Phyrexia).

Analysis: No contest. Japanophiles will prefer their anime, but everyone else will side with the non-cartoony art styles. I mean, here's some contrasting images featuring similar subjects:

...How long have I been typing this essay/rant, good lord!? The last category, finally! Contrasting only.

Contrasting:

Wizards of the Coast have been naughty in the past. Mythic Rarity leaves a bad taste in peoples' mouths generally, and some cards they've outright said should never have been printed, like Skullclamp. The banlists are updated a few times per year, and no emergency bans have taken place in a very, very long time. Playtesting of products is an important job that is taken seriously.

You saw the rarity fiasco Konami runs. Konami's banlist functions more like a "List of Things We Don't Pay Attention To." Let me show you one particular favorite, I have a theory that Konami doesn't actually playtest their cards at all.

Meet Yata-Garasu. The last line of text, for those too lazy to click the link reads, "When this card inflicts Battle Damage to your opponent, they skip their next Draw Phase".

You have got to be kidding me. Needless to say, the thing was banned swiftly, but for a while all it took was one poke from Yata-Garasu after a board/hand wipe to completely lock the opposing player out of being able to do anything for the rest of the game. Yeah. The YGO Forbidden Card list reads like a note I'd write to myself before going to the grocery store. If not outright forbidden, a card is casually put on the Restricted list, limiting the number of copies one can put in their deck. Band-Aid solutions are good, right?

In short, Konami handles their game very poorly, between absurd rarities being the only game-balancer, pathetic cards that clearly never saw playtest, and the general sense I get is that YGO is popular in spite of anything Konami has done rather than because of their management.

Final Conclusion:

Play MTG if you want an actual fulfilling game experience over the long-term, play YGO if you're just doofing around now and then with buddies.

My nephews went through their obligatory YGO phase when they were in primary school. They played a degenerate form of the game where they basically ignored most of the rules text on the cards, and just used the battle stats etc. (Think of playing magic where you can summon a Phyrexian Dreadnaught for 1 mana with no drawback).

They calmly assured me that my game was lame, because the monsters were so puny - obviously having an attack power of 8500 is better than 5.

I mean to each their own I guess. I think you're grossly simplifying how complex yu-gi-oh can actually be though.

Though there isn't a big comprehensive rules guide there are still tons of individual rulings for each card that if you compiled them, it would look just as complex, granted Konami who runs the game is taking strides to introduce simpler card text, better communication of rules etc.

Also, yu-gi-oh uses something very similar to the stack, it's not the same thing though, but it does produce different gameplay. I'd level them about the same in terms of difficulty of understanding. Overall, I don't think either game is simpler than the other. Different games, different rules.

Yu-gi-oh is heavily reliant on tech card choices, so while it may seem like deck construction is done for you, if you're not playing certain cards to react to format trends it will be really easy to lose. Deck construction is really dependant on those individual card choices and making sure your deck can still run efficiantly.

I'm not saying the OP is completely wrong, I'm just saying it is really REALLY biased. Ultimately, they're two games, ran by different companies. Heck, there are even two distinct playerbases, it's hard to compare the two. By posting this on a thread on Wizards sight, all this is gonna turn into is bashing a game which a lot of the people on this forum probably have little understanding about.

As someone whose friends played mainly Yugioh and playing it heavily myself let me comment on a few subjects:

Inzektors: They were a tier 1 deck for a little bit, but they were the weakest of the top 3 decks of Wind-Ups, Inzektors, and Dino-Rabbit. Inzektors are used to defeat grinding decks that do not go off in 1 turn.

Ease of play: Yugioh is easier to access, but at higher levels of play you have to deal with spell speeds, properly special summoning, and missing the timing which are very complicated and nit picky rules that are slightly difficult to understand, furthermore there is priority (which has been altered recently) and the stack does exist.

-There are 3 levels of spell speeds: A Spell Speed 1 card or effect can only be activated/cast when the active player has priority (casting a creature or activating an ability). A Spell Speed 2 card or effect can be activated at anytime while there is not a Spell Speed 3 card on the stack and the active player has pass priority or used a Spell Speed 1 or 2 card or effect. Spell Speed 3 cards and effects are typically reactive and require something to happen (such as an effect activating or a monster being summoned) and once they activate only another Spell Speed 3 effect can activate.

-Properly special summoning a creature allows you to fetch it from the graveyard with a reanimation effect. There are some effects that special summon a creature from the Extra Deck, but when it hits the graveyard it won't be able to be ressurected by an effect unless it is returned to the Extra deck by some ability and is special summoned correctly.

-Some reactive effects can only be used when something happens, and that condition must be the last thing that happened in the game. There is a card called Petin the Dark Clown, and when it is destroyed you can special summon a copy of it from your deck. If you sacrifice Petin the Dark Clown as the cost for an ability to activate you cannot special summon a clown from your deck as the last thing to happen was the effect of whatever you sacrificed Petin for; therefore you missed the timing on the card and cannot activate its ability.

-Counters: Hoo-boy there are counters is Yugioh, although not every deck can play them. Heralds aims to get a Herald of Perfection onto the field and protecting it so that you can negate enemy cards until you draw into one of the "Boss Creatures" and beatdown like a typical W/U deck. Dino-Rabbits tries to quickly get out cards that will slow the game down so that they can slowly beatdown the opponent with 1 or 2 slightly large creatures. Antimeta uses cards that distrupts your opponent and beats down with a few medium sized creatures. Wind-Ups uses pure attrition and hand-discard to set up game ending turns and massive card advantage. Modolches uses medium sized creatures that grant pure card advantage and backrow support to grind out the enemy. Inzektors are relatively small, but can deal with decks that can't kill in one turn while setting up to create an army of relatively large monsters. Furthermore, most decks can put in Solemn Warning (negates a creature being summoned at the cost of a lot of life points) or a Solemn Judgment (negates a single card from being played at the cost of half of your life points) which must be used strategically to mess up your oppoents plans.

Competitive Play and Deck Themes:Yes there are themes already laid out, but one aspect you forgot to mention was that so many cards were printed so that there are many different variations of the same theme and some tier 1 decks aren't actually made off of a premade theme.

-Different Decks made with a single theme: There are an infinite number of HERO decks out there, ranging from Bubble Beatdown which aims for a super fast kill by quickly getting out a Rank 4 XYZ to smack down your opponent quickly (think Red Deck Wins using rituals to create mana to summon a Flame Titan on turn 2 at the cost of huge card disadvantage) to the typical Toolbox Hero that uses fusions to get out a variety of relatively large monsters to deal with different situations.

-Decks that do not have a spoon fed theme: Dino-Rabbits uses several cards that are not from a theme to create a control-tempo style of deck.

Flavor:If you look at a lot of the cards some do tell stories across the cards.

Management:Konami uses the banlist to keep degenerate decks from dominating and to knock down some tier 1 decks. Recently restrictions and bans hit the top 3 decks (Inzektors, Dino-Rabbit, and Wind-Ups) taking away some of their degenerate behavior and making them slightly less consistant. The Yatagaratsu lock was only used for 1 format (which rotates twice a year) and Konami does not ban/limit cards during the middle of a format. Let it be known that Yatagarastu was when the game was really, really young and before R&D knew what they were doing.

-Different Decks made with a single theme: There are an infinite number of HERO decks out there, ranging from Bubble Beatdown which aims for a super fast kill by quickly getting out a Rank 4 XYZ to smack down your opponent quickly (think Red Deck Wins using rituals to create mana to summon a Flame Titan on turn 2 at the cost of huge card disadvantage)....

Just want to jump in and point something out here.That was already a deck, but it was more like turn 1 Deus of CalamityAlso, I think Dragon Stompy is the same/almost the same in either legacy or vintage.

I used to play Yu-gi-oh. Then Yata-garasu came out. After a few casual matches of getting pecked to death I quit. I don't understand how someone could make a card like that and not see a problem with it. It's like Stasis combined with Black Vise without the upkeep cost.

I used to play Yu-gi-oh. Then Yata-garasu came out. After a few casual matches of getting pecked to death I quit. I don't understand how someone could make a card like that and not see a problem with it. It's like Stasis combined with Black Vise without the upkeep cost.

Parts of Yu-Gi-Oh! are similar to Magic before the Sixth Edition rules change.

When multiple things need to happen at the same time in Yu-Gi-Oh! they create a chain. Chains are like batches from Magic. They resolve all at once, and you cannot add new things once they start to resolve.

Spell speed 3 cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! are like interupts. You can only respond to a spell speed 3 card with another spell speed 3 card.

There are also special windows for certain types of effects in Yu-Gi-Oh! like the damage prevention window in Magic. Certain cards that boost attack can be used during Damage Calculation when usually cards cannot be played.

This was cool and all... But I really would like to see a Magic/Munchkin comparison...

Stall until two players hit level 9. Everyone exhaust their resources ensuring the first one doesn't win, leaving nothing to counter the second player. If he flips a creature, game over. Otherwise, repeat.

This was a pretty well written OP. I'd agree with almost everything that was said. I played YGO online for a year or so and it was okay, but he's absolutely right in saying that Konami builds the decks for you. The archetypes are spoon fed to you and deck construction, as a result, usually ends up being pretty uninteresting.

I played an archetype called Gravekeepers. It was sort of an anti-meta deck which made use of traps (like instants) in order to slow down aggro decks until you're able to build a board presence and lock down the enemy's graveyard. At the time, a lot of Archetypes made heavy use of the graveyard, and Gravekeepers could completely hose them with a card called Necrovalley. Necrovalley not only blocked use of the graveyard, it also powered up your creatures to the point where all you needed to do was get damage through twice and the game was over.

The problem with the deck, however, and YGO in general I found, was how luck-based the game could be. The success of my gravekeeper deck usually boiled down to whether I drew Necrovalley, or a Necrovalley search card, early enough to make a difference. If I did, the game could end very quickly. If I didn't, it was usually a loss. The deck, however, pretty much played itself. There was very little variability and the only decisions I really ever had to make was which face down cards I wanted to destroy (hopefully getting lucky and choosing the right ones). This was a standard theme, I found, with a lot of other archetypes I played. A 40 card deck also really dumbed the game down, as your hands are generally going to play out the same way, every time.

Just a small clarification about spoonfed deck builds, Magic has them too. Slivers, allies, infect, arcane, Innistradi humans, eldrazi, metalcraft, the entire Lorwyn block and "lords" in general all do this exact thing.

And just to get this out there, Earthbound Immortals really aren't an "Archtype" in the same way "mono-black control" is. Earthbound Immortals are big finishers, but not really a deck. It's like trying to say dragons are a tribe, but worse because at least you can have more than one dragon at a time. For those who don't know, Earthbound Immortals have a restriction that there can only be one on the field at any time, so making an Earthbound Immortal deck would be a lot like deciding to make a Jace tribal deck now that there are 4 different Jace cards. Sure, there's a bit of support for EIs, but that doesn't mean they can be a deck of their own. The same goes with quite a few other archtypes in Yugioh and many of them that do make decks are versatile enough that there's more than one way to play them. One of my favorites was Lightsworn, which I often mixed with other archtypes that use the graveyard. This was because Lightsworns are self-mill cards that gained power from milling lightsworns (think "Splinterfright tribal"), so pairing them with various graveyard cards made for some pretty interesting gameplay.

I mostly played the "World Championship" videogame series.

This was a pretty well written OP. I'd agree with almost everything that was said. I played YGO online for a year or so and it was okay, but he's absolutely right in saying that Konami builds the decks for you. The archetypes are spoon fed to you and deck construction, as a result, usually ends up being pretty uninteresting.

I played an archetype called Gravekeepers. It was sort of an anti-meta deck which made use of traps (like instants) in order to slow down aggro decks until you're able to build a board presence and lock down the enemy's graveyard. At the time, a lot of Archetypes made heavy use of the graveyard, and Gravekeepers could completely hose them with a card called Necrovalley. Necrovalley not only blocked use of the graveyard, it also powered up your creatures to the point where all you needed to do was get damage through twice and the game was over.

The problem with the deck, however, and YGO in general I found, was how luck-based the game could be. The success of my gravekeeper deck usually boiled down to whether I drew Necrovalley, or a Necrovalley search card, early enough to make a difference. If I did, the game could end very quickly. If I didn't, it was usually a loss. The deck, however, pretty much played itself. There was very little variability and the only decisions I really ever had to make was which face down cards I wanted to destroy (hopefully getting lucky and choosing the right ones). This was a standard theme, I found, with a lot of other archetypes I played. A 40 card deck also really dumbed the game down, as your hands are generally going to play out the same way, every time.

What your complaint basically is, is that you played a pre-built deck and it played like a pre-built deck. From the sounds of it, you used a total gravekeeper's deck with little to no non-gravekeeper's cards in it. It's a lot like expecting "event decks" to actually be playable. Like Magic decks, you need to pick cards that take away the luck aspect of the game, or at least minimize it as much as possible. A simple solution for this is to try constructing that same Gravekeeper's deck and make it just as effective, but without using Necrovalley. Like Magic, you need to be able to fix your deck so that luck isn't even a factor. This is actually made easier by the fact that archtypes often have unifying traits such as Gravekeepers all being Spellcasters. If you are playing pur gravekeepers, one card that seems like an easy choice is called "Solidarity" (if I remember right) and it gives a massive "Attack" boost to all your creatures of a single type (more than Necrovalley does actually) as long as every creature in your graveyard also shares that type. The point is that when you allow yourself to rely on a single card in any game, you can't blaim Konami (or Wizards) for your victories being based on drawing that card.

I think there actually is a good argument to be made that Magic is more based on luck due to how large of a part lands play in it. If you draw a hand with no lands in it or only one land, you have to reduce your starting hand size and if you just have horrible luck and don't draw enough lands the second time, you can expect to lose the whole game. Same goes if you draw too many lands. That's why the "0,1,6,7" Mulligan rule is so popular in casual play. In yugioh, the only way to get "Mana Screwed" like that is to draw nothing but level 5+ monsters (which you are advised against having more than 3 in your deck, although I usually went with 6). Sure, you can get hands where you only draw monsters or only draw spell/trap cards, but you can still play something with either of those hands. You can't do anything when all you have are lands or you don't have any lands. And the same goes for drawing lands of the wrong colors.

As for 40-card decks "dumbing the game down", that's pretty misleading as it ignores a lot of the context. Yes the deck sizes in MTG are 50% larger, but the card-per-deck limit goes up from 3 to 4 on "nonbasic" cards that aren't named relentless rats. That's a 33.3% increase on the Card-Per-Deck limit. And at least 20 of your 60 cards in Magic are going to be lands too, many of which are just basic or dual lands that do nothing aside from give some extra mana (some however can be utility or man-lands that help when you have nothing to play or need to end a game quickly). And if you think Yugioh decks "play themselves", consider that due to the mana curve system, you are more likely to play cards in the same order each game (2-drops are played on turn 2, 3-drops are played on turn 3, ect.). Control decks don't have that problem as much, but many decks do.

Although I know lands gives a card balance, sometimes when I get terribly manaflooded in a game I really want to vent my frustration by getting into Yugioh (I have never played it).

I guess I should play it to get into a conclusion myself. Most of the complaints about it doesn't look unique to Yugioh. Printing of overpowered cards that dominate the format until the company have them gone? check. A development work that gives the player a solid impression they could have done better? Check (consult the Zac Hill thread in the Standard forum if you have any doubts).

Some of the thinks I appreaciate from that game is a)They actually reprint the cards should they reach a high price and b) The banlist seems to be more dynamic and have metagame diversity as a criteria. The fact that they do that and the sky doesn't fall is one the best arguments to use against the Magic people that oppose bans and reprints as if they were blasphemy.

My main question is: having casual decks on mind without the obligatory overpowered cards, is yugioh fun, varied and skill dependant? The fact that a number of Magic games is doomed to be decided by manascrew or flood makes me want to try it.

If Limited gets in the way of printing good Constructed cards...
Screw limited

@OP - Did you mention that Magic is a game, made by game designers who actually care about what their environments look like and try their best to marry needing to make money, and wanted to make an enjoyable experience for mature gamers who will call BS when they see it. They don't always get it right, and they do sometimes take the piss, but they're honest guys, they work with the community, and they TRY.

YGO, on the other hand, always was and still is a business that LOOKS like a game, designed specificially to be kiddy crack that some people take seriously.

And I WAS one of those guys. I started and won the first proper tournaments in the UK. It is no exaggeration whatsoever to say that I was one of the founding pillars of the UK YGO community. I started playing the game the moment it came out in stores all those years ago, and stopped as soon as Synchro stuff started showing up because that was the line.

And let me tell you, you're well within your rights to like the the game and take it seriously, but don't for a minute think that anyone involved in the creation of YGO thinks of you as anything other then a wallet with legs to milk as much as possible. What's funny is it works too. There is a reason why YGO(according to the Guiness Book anyway) has sold more cards then any other game of its type, comfortably.

And to be totally honest, seeing as how yugioh was doing the secret rare thing from set one, I've always found the idea of Mythic Rare to be an unhappily familiar thing if you know what I'm saying.

And to be totally honest, seeing as how yugioh was doing the secret rare thing from set one, I've always found the idea of Mythic Rare to be an unhappily familiar thing if you know what I'm saying.

Did you mention that Magic is a game, made by game designers who actually care about what their environments look like and try their best to marry needing to make money, and wanted to make an enjoyable experience for mature gamers who will call BS when they see it. They don't always get it right, and they do sometimes take the piss, but they're honest guys, they work with the community, and they TRY.

Your last statement contradicts your first statement. So Yu-Gi-Oh has been all about getting as much money out of you since day one with it's crazy rarity system, but then Magic is a game made by people who are really looking out for their players and trying to keep things balanced between cost and power? How then does the addition of Mythic rare make any sense at all? The only sense it makes is monetary. Just read up on JtmS and tell me "They don't always get it right, and they do sometimes take the piss, but they're honest guys, they work with the community, and they TRY." It boiled down to, "hey this guy is super strong in testing, and we don't have any time left for further testing, but what if we slapped a free brainstorm on there to make him even stronger, that wouldn't be completely nuts right? Yeah lets do that."

I'm not saying I hate WotC, I love them to death and all, but they are still a business and they are still very obviously trying to make your dollar.

57170298 wrote:

Borrowing the East Wind (P3) - Haha, it's like Hurricane but for horsemanship? That makes hilariously little sense. "Oh man, the wind is so much worse up on this horse."

57044478 wrote:

Jon Finkel can win a Magic tournament with a ham sandwich. That doesn't mean ham sandwiches are now the metagame breaker.

97820278 wrote:

Koth: I'm the first viable red planeswalker. Who are you?
Tibalt: I'm a two-mana red planeswalker.
Koth: I'm the last viable red planeswalker.

For example: "Rain is wet, but it's brilliant at drying clothes." THAT is a logical contradiction, because something cannot be wet AND really good at drying clothes.

WOTC can introduce a new rarity as a way of making more units sell AND still be a bunch of people trying to make an actually crafted game that they care about. And my statements can clash when I highlight the specific caveat you mentioned. I.E. They ARE a business(try their best to marry needing to make money...).

You may consider that something of a bold statement, but if you never played tournament YGO for any given length of time you'll just have to trust me. That game is a case study in power creep. A set puts forward powerful card A, the next set answers that, the next set answers the answers and so on, all the while very little is getting banned apart from the PROPER broken stuff and there is no rotation to end the reign of terror over certain cards(JtMS for example). Like I said, mistakes get made and sometimes they take the piss, but they don't want to see this game get actually ruined. The people that run YGO couldn't care less as long as the product moves.

Comparing Yu-Gi-Oh to anime is like comparing yu-gi-oh to magic: the gathering. In both cases, anyone who has any experience whatsoever with the latter will want to hit you.

LOL So true. Amazingly, 4kids still managed to screw up Yugioh.

Another odd thing is that though the Yugioh manga makes it clear that trading card games as a concept originated in the US, most Americans, for "Cowboy Bebop at his computer" reasons, think of them as a Japanese thing. (Mostly because of Pokemon and Yugioh.) Go figure.

Comparing Yu-Gi-Oh to anime is like comparing yu-gi-oh to magic: the gathering. In both cases, anyone who has any experience whatsoever with the latter will want to hit you.

LOL So true. Amazingly, 4kids still managed to screw up Yugioh.

Another odd thing is that though the Yugioh manga makes it clear that trading card games as a concept originated in the US, most Americans, for "Cowboy Bebop at his computer" reasons, think of them as a Japanese thing. (Mostly because of Pokemon and Yugioh.) Go figure.

I speak many truths.

If I die, you should start a religious sect. Just claim my mom was a virgin, and hide my body before the funeral. Try feeding it to pigs, I hear that's a good way to red rid of it.

Nice post OP. I dabbled with Yugioh back when I was in middle school.... but admittedly it was only because magic the gathering seemed way to hard to learn how to play at the time. Yugioh is simple. Now that I learned how to play magic and I am half way decent at it, I get a much more rewarding feeling from playing this game. Yugioh is more of a child-friendly game (hate to say that, but it's true).

My main question is: having casual decks on mind without the obligatory overpowered cards, is yugioh fun, varied and skill dependant? The fact that a number of Magic games is doomed to be decided by manascrew or flood makes me want to try it.

Mana screw/flood does not happen in Yugioh, although it is possible to only draw monsters which restricts you by only letting you play 1 card (you can only play 1 monster each turn), or you can draw too many spell/trap cards and not have monsters to protect your life. I consider this significantly less of a disadvantage than manascrew, but Yugioh doesn't have a Mulligan rule either.

Yugioh doesn't have as many insanely overpowered cards such as the titans or snapcaster, although Mirror Force comes close (It's basically a better sunblast angel for free without the body and can only be used when you are attacked), which was why it was limited to 1-per deck last time I checked. For the most part, I think Konami does a pretty good job at balancing the game as long as people are prepared for a ban on their favorite cards at any moment.

Finally, I'd say it's as skill dependant but not as varied as Magic is. The mana system allows for much more variation as opposed to yugioh's archtypes which become predictable after the first time you play them. This isn't true with the larger archtypes like elemental heros which have plenty of variation, but if you play against one gravekeeper's deck, you played against them all. Note that this is due to your perception of the deck, and not that they all play the same. A gravekeeper's deck with strong tech is going to play far better than one that's only gravekeeper's cards, but the uniqueness of decks are in the littler things that are harder to notice. Non-archtype decks are more interesting, I just don't think yugioh players like experimenting as much because it's easier to just use spoonfed archtypes instead of their own creativity.

My ultimate complaint is that almost all the new cards in Yugioh refer to other archtypes or even specific cards. Buying singles is basically a requirement. Ironically though, this makes really fun gameplay... For a video game. It's not so fun to pay real money to get cards that you can't use, but in the World Championship games, getting those other cards so you can create your ultimate deck is actually pretty fun. That's why I would advise you to buy the video games instead of cards if you want to play yugioh. The World Championship series gives you the ability to make decks using almost every card in existance and doesn't limit you to simply editing prebuilt decks like a certain game for another trading card game does (Yes, that one).

I think he betrayed his level a bit there. People were diuscussing whether Mirror Force was OP or not back in the Goat Control days and decided it wasn't, it's a 1-1 more often then not and any half decent play can read one like a book.